Hacker News Reader

Comment by jack_riminton | Hacker News Reader

Does this infer that only a UK based company can buy them from now on? How would this affect their share price if they'd go public?

View on HN

Not necessarily. From reading the piece I understand that the net effect here is to invoke an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (ie to ensure there is sufficient competition in the market, it does not necessarily need to be by UK owned entities)

Public-traded companies are independent, so no merger or consolidation applies. Here is what the U.K. regulatory body defines a 'relevant merger' (regardless if U.K. or internationally-based):

the creation of a relevant merger situation as defined in section 23 of the Enterprise Act 2002 (“the Act”), in that:

(a) two or more enterprises will cease to be distinct;

(b) in the course of the enterprises ceasing to be distinct, a person or group of persons will bring a relevant enterprise (as defined in section 23A of the Act) under their ownership or control; and

Surely that horse bolted when they sold to Softbank. I suspect they will try to argue that it has to be someone “outside the US” or otherwise protected from monopolistic actors.

Not necessarily, but only to companies that pose less of a security risk than Nvidia.

They said they're going to release material soon to justify their decision so we'll have to see what that all means.

No. It just means Nvidia need to give some kickbacks to the fantastically corrupt ruling party.

Really hard to see this as anything other than a shakedown attempt by people who don’t understand that you can’t keep an ip licensing company inside national borders for long.

You may be right about the reason. Or maybe it’s something to do with positioning between US and EU.

The correct move would be to nationalise ARM and build a fab, but the Tories are very unlikely to do that.

Because even if it was successful from a national security standpoint (semicon independence) it would look like a total boondoggle. It would cost billions of government money, and then overrun those billions in cost. Chips would still be slower than their competitors, and the new British fabbed chips would be even slower. No matter which party pulled the trigger, the other would ruthlessly tear the project down in the eyes of the public as corrupt and expensive, terrible for the environment, huge water and land usage, etc.

I'm not trying to say that ARM is incompetent, but it takes years for an institution to learn how to do this. ARM doesn't currently operate fabs.

It would be a separate effort from ARM itself, merely complimentary. It wouldn't have to be too expensive either, if it avoided private profit-seeking suppliers and instead attempted to vertically integrate by nationalising related industries.

You're correct that neither main party would do this, partly because of the inadequacies of the liberal election cycle. Only direct worker democracy could reliably centrally plan for use rather than profit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com